Walking in Your Landscape
by The Lovely Cynic
Summary: Ideals change. Interests change. People change. //Squalo/Yamamoto.//


**Walking in Your Landscape**

Yamamoto drew his knees up to his chest. He was bruised, battered and had cuts and gashes varying in size and severity over almost every part of his body. He was exhausted and sore and _in pain_, but he felt... accomplished. Improved.

He let out a sigh, breath hanging in a condensed cloud in the air before drifting away into the night. The fire gave off a warm, comforting glow in the otherwise dark—and slightly creepy, he thought—clearing in the woods. The stars hung brightly overhead in glittering clusters; the sky was completely clear and, with no city lights polluting the dark, perfect for stargazing.

Yamamoto felt peaceful. He was hungry and aching, but he was _calm_. These training sessions with Squalo were always a nice break in his hectic, stressful routine.

Twice every year since he was sixteen, Squalo would show up without notice and drag Yamamoto away to the woods to train. It didn't matter what was going on at the time, because, to Squalo, the sword should come first and—if Squalo had anything to say about it—_would_ come first. The sessions would usually last a week at the most and Yamamoto would return with new scars and fresh wounds, but for more relaxed. Since it seemed to do him some good, neither Yamamoto's father nor Tsuna, ever protested... much.

Five years later and Yamamoto still enjoyed these sessions as much as he did when he was sixteen. Not only did it give him several uninterrupted days to concentrate solely on the blade, but it gave him several uninterrupted days with his favourite teacher. Squalo was a master swordsman and Yamamoto never tired of watching him move with a sword in hand—fluid as water and naturally, as if the blade were an extension of himself.

Yamamoto had to laugh at that, really. Technically, Squalo's blade was a _literal_ extension of himself.

They were at par most days, in battle at least. Squalo knew that he surpassed Yamamoto in sheer _skill_, but they always matched when it came to actual sparring. Since he was sixteen, the Japanese man had learned to open up to new styles and techniques, but always—much to Squalo's irritation—incorporated his _Shigure Soen_ style in some way.

"VOOII!"

Yamamoto nearly fell over in surprise.

A flash of black leather and white hair immerged from the bushes with some sort of animal in hand. The fire cast jagged shadows across Squalo's face, glinting off sharp teeth and illuminating his steely gray eyes. "I have dinner, brat!" he snapped, tossing a dead rabbit into Yamamoto's chest.

Yamamoto could only laugh. "Thanks, Squalo." He grinned, taking out a pocketknife from the duffel bag he brought along. It usually stayed packed with the basics just in case the silver-haired swordsman ever decided to drag him away at any point. "You know," he hummed as he started to skin the rabbit, "I'm not exactly a brat anymore."

Squalo only scoffed and sat down next to the fire, peeling off his coat and gloves, placing his artificial hand off to the side. "You'll always be a brat, Rain brat."

Yamamoto smiled at the almost—_almost_—fond tone in Squalo's voice. "Whatever you say," he chuckled.

Once the skin was stripped off the rabbit meat, the Japanese man started cutting chunks off and skewering them in a sort of shish kabob. Yamamoto liked these moments best—the times when he and his teacher sat in comfortable silence, cooking dinner around a dying fire. It was relaxing and cozy and... intimate. It felt like he and Squalo were actually connecting in these moments.

Yamamoto stuck the rabbit shish kabob over the fire, watching it cook and sizzle.

"You know..." he sighed, "I really like coming out here," he said softly, turning the stick over, seeing the chunks of meat start to brown "I always wonder if you're going to come back," he laughed.

"You sound like a needy lover, kid," Squalo snorted. "Of course I'll come back. If it weren't for me, you wouldn't train at all."

"Hey, that's not true—"

"Shut the fuck up," the silver-haired swordsman snapped. "Your improvement's come to a plateau. You're not any better this time than you were last time." He frowned, raking a hand through his hair. "All that baseball shit is distracting you."

Yamamoto bit his lip and stared into the fire. He thought he _had_ been improving, but....

He sighed, feeling suddenly physically and mentally drained.

---

Three years later and the sun was starting to set just over the trees in the small clearing. A dark shade was cast over the woods, an invitingly cool breeze stirring the red and orange leaves on their branches. A few fell loose, dotting the green ground with rich colour.

"Fuck!"

The loud, echoing sound startled animals in the woods. A few birds scattered into the pink sky and a few rabbits darted away in fear.

"Shit, shit, shit, you fucking _kid!_" Squalo hissed, bursting into the clearing and laying a pale and bleeding Yamamoto on the ground. "This is your fucking fault! You should've paid attention!"

"S-sorry...."

"Shut _up!_" Squalo snapped. He dug through the bag, throwing clothes and food scraps and a flashlight out as he did. "You're a fucking moron. That Storm brat is right about you," he snarled viciously, pulling out a needle and thread.

Yamamoto smiled, cracking the caking blood on his face. There was a fucking _chunk_ missing from his face.

"VOOII! Stop that, you're making it worse, brat!" Squalo threaded the needle and pulled out a bottle of vodka from Yamamoto's trusty duffel bag. "This is going to fucking hurt. Drink this."

He shoved the clear bottle in the Japanese man's face, whose mouth opened obediently. Squalo poured some of the liquor past Yamamoto's lips and then poured more onto the gash, still gushing blood. The dark-haired man whimpered and tried to jerk his head away instinctively, but Squalo kept a firm grip on his hair.

"You fucking idiot. _Idiot_," he growled, using his other hand to take hold of the sharp little needle, align it with the two ends of the fucking _crevice_ on Yamamoto's chin and pierced it through the flap of flesh. He could feel the ridges of the thread catch against some torn skin, but continued to pull it through. He tugged; he pulled the two sides closed and then did it again and again and again until the cut was finally shut. He took a bandage out of the bag and flattened it over the makeshift stitches, breath slightly shaky.

"Tsuna... not going to be... happy," Yamamoto mumbled drowsily. His face was deathly pale and he was shivering.

"Shut up, kid," Squalo grumbled. "You're going to go hypothermic if you keep blabbing. Sleep. We're going to train tomorrow still." The silver-haired man growled and shucked his coat off, throwing it over Yamamoto.

"Night, Squalo..." the Japanese swordsman whispered, hazy eyes closing completely.

Squalo scowled at the burnt-out fire pit and kicked a rock into it. He hugged his knees to his chest and rested his chin on them. His hair fell over him like a curtain and he stayed there in perturbed silence.

---

It was spring when Squalo came and dragged Yamamoto away again—on the Japanese man's twenty-fifth birthday. In the clearing, rebirth was evident around them. Baby birds chirped on high tree branches and the scuttling of little feet on the forest bed didn't go unnoticed to the swordsmen's trained ears. It was beautiful and green and new everywhere.

The gash that Squalo had left was now a scar—mottled and twisted over the strong jawbone and sharp chin. It felt like a _brand_, almost; a mark to show Squalo's property.

This trip was like any other trip, but... different, in a way. Squalo was more relaxed, didn't drag him off to train at the first possible moment. In fact, he sat down, pulled off his coat and pulled out a bottle of scotch. "Xanxus is going to break the bottle over my head when I get back, so you better be thankful," he growled.

Yamamoto stared in surprise for a moment before laughing heartily. "No training today, I'm guessing?"

"I figured I'd switch things up a bit." Squalo rolled his eyes and took a hit of the amber alcohol. "This shit is nasty. I don't fucking know how the boss stands it."

"Bet it gets you wasted faster."

"Boss never gets wasted. I swear to god, he metabolizes this shit so fast that it's, like... instantaneous." Squalo smirked, passing the bottle to Yamamoto. "He has a liver of steel."

The black-haired swordsman laughed and shook his head. "Either that or he's just drunk all the time." He shrugged, sipping at the bottle. "Could explain the mild insanity."

"Mild," Squalo snorted, pushing some hair out of his eyes. "You're twenty-five now."

"Really? I didn't know!"

"VOOII! Don't patronize me, I'll fucking kill you!" Squalo snapped, glaring hard at Yamamoto, who shut his mouth instantly. "What I was _trying_ to say was that you're fucking twenty-five, right? So..." he paused, snatching the bottle back and drinking deeply from it. "What does the sword mean to you, Takeshi?"

Yamamoto froze. Squalo's eyes were dark and steely, glinting like the blade on his hand. Dangerous. "You just called me by my name," he said dumbly.

"I _asked_ you a question!"

"A-aha! Yeah, sorry," Yamamoto murmured. His face was starting to heat up, he could feel it. Whether it was from the conversation or a reaction to alcohol, he wasn't sure. "I mean... well... the sword..." he paused, mouth opening and closing, tasting words, but all of them wrong. "It...." He frowned, thinking deeply.

"Don't think too hard, you'll burst a blood vessel." Squalo rolled his eyes, passing the bottle back.

Yamamoto smiled easily and shook his head. "It's like baseball," he murmured, sipping at the liquid in the bottle. "But different. Baseball was fun and it was important to me and it felt like my whole _life_, but..." he trailed off. What _was_ different? There was something that made him feel differently about the sword than baseball. It was a complicated feeling, throwing so many things into play that he wasn't sure about.... "It's dangerous and it's thrilling and it's frightening. I protect lives, but take them as well and I guess that freaks me out a bit. But, you know... if it weren't for the sword, Squalo..." He smiled sincerely, staring at his feet. "...I wouldn't have met you."

Squalo's eyebrows rose slightly and he stared incredulously at Yamamoto. "That was the sappiest bullshit I've ever heard," he sighed, staring up at the sky.

"It's true, though!" Yamamoto laughed, wiping his mouth.

"You're drunk."

"Not quite." He grinned, placing the bottle down. "Almost. Not quite."

Squalo's eyes shifted back to the black-haired man at his side, smiling like an idiot. "Come here, Takeshi."

And he leaned over and kissed the smile right off that idiotic face.


End file.
